Daily Dothttp://www.dailydot.com/Daily Dot Articleen-usThu, 21 Jun 2012 13:00:00 +0000How to have perfect Internet Comment Etiquettehttp://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/internet-comment-etiquette-erik-hoffstad-interview/<p><img src='//cdn0.dailydot.com/cache/78/7a/787a192996520fb3690f3357f0e840a7.jpg'></p><p>
What&#39;s it take to write the perfect YouTube comment?</p>
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Try leaving the caps lock on. Then throw in a dose of bad grammar, write a few &quot;shits&quot; and a &quot;fuck&quot; or two in the middle. When applicable, drop the N-word at a most inopportune moment. Support the hell out of Rep. Ron Paul. Don&#39;t forget to mention that 9/11 was an inside job.</p>
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Those are the instructions put forth by 27-year-old Erik Hoffstad, a self-proclaimed &quot;lazy piece of shit&quot; who writes Web content for FX during the days and trolls YouTube like a drunk teenager at night. As the defiant personality Internet Comment Etiquette, Hoffstad excels in celebrating the filthy, troll-filled cesspool that is a standard YouTube comment thread.</p>
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&quot;YouTube comments have always been hilarious,&quot; Hoffstad told the Daily Dot from his home in Los Angeles.</p>
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&quot;The attitude that people have when they&#39;re anonymous is such a strange look into how people act compared to how they talk. You can&#39;t tell who anyone is who&#39;s leaving these comments. They just take the first thing that comes to mind and throw a couple F-words in there and say something racist and, boom, they&#39;ve got themselves a comment that stays on the Internet forever.&quot;</p>
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It&#39;s a simple science, one that Hoffstad first turned his attention towards in 2009. That&rsquo;s when, dressed like a just-skipped-class college student in his darkened bedroom, he fired his&nbsp;<a href="http://youtu.be/ECVCcS2FyTI">first comment</a> at a YouTuber who wanted to teach his viewers how to roast a chicken.</p>
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&quot;Hey, nice chicken recipe asshole!&quot; he typed in the video. &quot;You really know how to cook even though your a retarded fuckpile of vaginas. go roast these nuts in your mouth at 300 degrees and then we can talk about how you messed up the garnish. 9/11 was an inside job. aaaaaaaaannnnnnnndddddd fuck you.&quot;</p>
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<iframe class="youtube-player" frameborder="0" height="527" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ECVCcS2FyTI?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" type="text/html" width="640"></iframe></p>
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Since that fateful night, Hoffstad has left comments for everybody from<a href="http://youtu.be/lJu2G1dvTIU"> Jenna Marbles</a> to<a href="http://youtu.be/1K_dNE3SlJw"> Mitt Romney</a>. He drinks Coors Lights in one video, slugs Jameson whisky in another. In the<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K_dNE3SlJw&amp;feature=youtu.be"> &quot;Talking to Politicians&quot;</a> episode, Hoffstad goes so far as to insinuate that he&#39;s writing his comments with his testicles.</p>
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&quot;The character in Internet Comment Etiquette is this guy who sees that there&#39;s a need for lessons in this area of Internet culture and feels that he&#39;s the one to provide them,&quot; said Hoffstad, a new syndication partner with the Daily Dot. &quot;But at the same time, he&#39;s the same asshole as everybody else who&#39;s leaving these terrible comments.&quot;</p>
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Hoffstad equates Internet Comment Etiquette episodes to roasts, ones in which the jokers don&#39;t bother to leave the gloves on. He&#39;s hating, sure, but that hate&#39;s founded in humor, and he can generally understand why the videos he watches have a certain mass appeal.</p>
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&quot;You have to dig really deep and pull out all of their shit, but it has to be funny for them as well. You can&#39;t just tear into someone or else you&#39;re yelling at them. There needs to be a small level of respect where you get what they&#39;re doing and can still find a way to make fun of it.&quot;</p>
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<iframe class="youtube-player" frameborder="0" height="527" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hhQfBlthOWM?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" type="text/html" width="640"></iframe></p>
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It&#39;s with that finite set of parameters in mind that Hoffstad trolls YouTube looking for suitable subjects. Commenting on&nbsp;<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJu2G1dvTIU&amp;feature=youtu.be">Marbles</a> succeeds, to a certain extent at least, because the blond vlogger knows that her constant sexualizing is what helps make her the most-popular woman on YouTube, Hoffstad said. By contrast, ranting on Ray William Johnson, the&nbsp;<a href="http://vidstatsx.com/youtube-top-10-most-subscribed-channels">site&#39;s most-subscribed-to personality</a>, wouldn&#39;t work; there&#39;s just not enough to work with.</p>
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&quot;You&#39;ve got to give that guy credit, but at the same time, his videos fucking stink,&quot; Hoffstad said. &quot;I&#39;ve tried to watch them before to see if I could do an episode on him, but they&#39;re too boring for me to even make fun of. It&#39;s just him in his stupid comic book room talking about stuff you&#39;re going to hear no matter what.&quot;</p>
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The key is finding a nice little mix between the videos he likes and the videos he understands why other people like.</p>
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&quot;I don&#39;t want to be overly mean,&rdquo; Hoffstad said.</p>
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&ldquo;I don&#39;t want to glorify hatred. I just want to make fun of the average IQ of a YouTube commenter and make it a joke that that&#39;s the way you have to leave a YouTube comment. You have to say the N-word, and you have to say that something sucks.&quot;</p>
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And don&#39;t forget: #RonPaul2012</p>
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<em>Photo via <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhQfBlthOWM&amp;feature=relmfu">YouTube</a></em></p>
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chase@dailydot.com (Chase Hoffberger)Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:00:00 +0000http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/internet-comment-etiquette-erik-hoffstad-interview/YouTubeEntertainment